Paul Goble
Staunton, Dec. 28 – The Russian State Duma has begun to maintain a Chinese-language version of its official site, a move that has prompted the anti-censorship site, censoru.net, to ask in despair whether Vladimir Putin has “already sold Russia to China” and wants Beijing as “the future master” of his country to be apprised of the latest developments in Moscow.
Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin made the announcement. He declared that “it was decided to launch a version of the official website of the State Duma in Chinese” as “relations between our countries are developing dynamically and there is enormous interest in Russia in China” (censoru.net/2023/12/28/putin-uzhe-prodal-rossiju-kitaju.html).
The Chinese version of the Duma site has already gone up and the censoru.net article features a screenshot of what it looks like. The portal says that Volodin further justified the decision by saying that “Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world,” having earlier dismissed English as a dead language.”
Just how sensitive such things are for Russians was suggested recently by London-based Russian analyst Vladimir Pastukhov. On the EchoFM channel, he said that in his view, “the main question which will be given to Putin in the court of history won’t be about his usurpation of power or his theft of billions” (t.me/echofm_online/11804).
Instead, the Kremlin leader will be asked “only one question: was the choice in favor of China really an historical choice by the Russian people of their new (in fact, old) fate as a vassal state under Asian despotism – or was it the personal choice by Putin’s thieving elites of a new ‘roof’ to the detriment of and contrary to the real interests of the Russian people?”
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